Mrs. Clinton, we’re assured by sources right and left, tortures puppies and eats babies. But her policy proposals continue to be surprisingly bold and progressive.

Finally, Mr. Obama is widely portrayed, not least by himself, as a transformational figure who will usher in a new era. But his actual policy proposals, though liberal, tend to be cautious and relatively orthodox.

I was remiss in my moderator duties. I want to ask you what I should bring up when I moderate a panel Friday evening. Please do help me do my job. The details again: I’m moderating a panel on how the internet is changing politics this Friday at 6p at New York University: Warren Weaver Hall, 251 Mercer St.,. Room 109. The stars of the show: Arianna Huffington, founder of Huffington Post and Off the Bus cofounder; Micah Sifry, editor of TechPresident.com; Lisa Tozzi, The New York Times assistant politics editor responsible for web coverage; Jay Rosen, NYU professor and Off the Bus cofounder. We’ll be talking about how the internet has changed — and will change — politics, media, and government. The event will be webcast by the amazing Rachel Sterne at GroundReport TV. Please join in.

Brian Stelter has an excellent piece in today’s New York Times about young people and their different relationship with media in this campaign. As Pew has pointed out, young people especially (and people of all ages) act as conduits as much as consumers. And they expect to watch video themselves. This is also a clear example of how the peer replaces the editor. My favorite line:

Ms. Buckingham recalled conducting a focus group where one of her subjects, a college student, said, “If the news is that important, it will find me.”

You have to drop that bottle in the ocean, or no one will find it.

And this:

Rather than treating video-sharing Web sites as traditional news sources, young people use them as tools and act as editors themselves.

“We’re talking about a generation that doesn’t just like seeing the video in addition to the story — they expect it,” said Danny Shea, 23, the associate media editor for The Huffington Post (huffingtonpost.com). “And they’ll find it elsewhere if you don’t give it to them, and then that’s the link that’s going to be passed around over e-mail and instant message.”

Now compare and contrast this with Lee Gomes in the Wall Street Journal, who can write clueful and clueless columns on the internet. His latest should be dropped in the latter bucket. He’s just not sure what to make of this internet thing and its impact on politics. Could be bad, could be good. Hmmmm. Web videos, especially on YouTube, are a good place to start. They have been called the death of the TV sound bite, for the way voters can experience lengthy realities without the filters of a news show constrained by time limits and commercials. The 37 minutes of Sen. Obama’s race speech quickly became one of the most widely downloaded.

Less clear is whether YouTube will be just as bad, or worse, at blurring the line between a fair point and a cheap shot than newspapers or TV ever were.

That’s he problem with columns: You have to write them even when you don’t have anything to say. I’ll wait for his next one.

:Later: TechPresident reports the ratings for the Obama race speech: More than 4million views for the speech or excerpts on YouTube.

I’m moderating a panel on how the internet is changing politics this Friday at 6p at New York University: Warren Weaver Hall, 251 Mercer St.,. Room 109. The stars of the show: Arianna Huffington, founder of Huffington Post and Off the Bus cofounder; Micah Sifry, editor of TechPresident.com; Lisa Tozzi, The New York Times assistant politics editor responsible for web coverage; Jay Rosen, NYU professor and Off the Bus cofounder. We’ll be talking about how the internet has changed — and will change — politics, media, and government. The event will be webcast by the amazing Rachel Sterne at GroundReport TV. Please join in.

LATER: Another interesting panel, this one at CUNY‘s Graduate School of Journalism, 219 W. 40th St. between 7th and 8th, on Tuesday, April 1 at 6p:

Inside Iran: What’s Next.

Associate Professor Lonnie Isabel will moderate a panel on Iran featuring Laura Secor and Roozbeh Mirebrahmi, two journalists who have covered the country extensively. Secor has just returned from Iran after covering elections there. A former New York Times Op-Ed page editor and former senior editor of Lingua Franca, Secor has written about Iran for the Times, the New Yorker, the Nation, and several other publications. Mirebrahimi is the first International Journalist in Residence at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. A well-known blogger in Farsi, he is chief editor of the online magazine, Iran dar Jahan (Iran in the World), and is a contributor to online newspapers that circumvent the censorship and intimidation of reporters in Iran. He is currently on trial in absentia in Tehran as a result of his reporting there. The event is open to the public. If you’re interested in attending, please RSVP to lonnie.isabel AT journalism.cuny.edu.